MAY 6, 2024 — On April 8, 2024, the New Jersey District Court accepted the entry of a settlement reached by NOAA and our co-trustees with Wyeth Holdings, LLC. This settlement compensates for natural resource injuries resulting from hazardous substance releases at/near the American Cyanamid Superfund Site in Bridgewater, New Jersey.
OR&R Weekly Report
The Office of Response and Restoration publishes this weekly round-up of news and information of interest to our partners, stakeholders, and team members. Click to subscribe
MAY 6, 2024 — On April 23 - 24, the Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R), led by Director Scott Lundgren, hosted a two-day tour of major restoration and debris removal projects in Washington State for Deputy Assistant Administrator for Ocean Services and Coastal Zone Management Paul Scholz. A congressional staffer for Senator Patty Murray’s (D-WA) also joined for key events.
MAY 6, 2024 — On October 25, 2023, a local power and water utility experienced a release of diesel fuel from a tank at a plant in Havensight, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. The spill of No. 2 diesel was discharged outside the tank’s secondary containment. Original spill estimates of 33,600 gallons of diesel have since been updated and calculated to be over 50,000 gallons.
MAY 6, 2024 — From April 22-29, 2024, over 2,500 participants—representing 170 governments as well as stakeholders from nongovernment organizations, academia, the private sector, the United Nations, and other international organizations—met in Ottawa, Canada, for the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-4) to continue negotiations towards a new international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution.
MAY 6, 2024 — From April 23-25, OR&R staff participated in the annual meeting of the National Response Team (NRT) held in St. Louis, Missouri. The NRT provides technical assistance, resources and coordination on preparedness, planning, response and recovery activities for emergencies involving hazardous substances, pollutants and contaminants, oil, and weapons of mass destruction in natural and technological disasters and other environmental incidents of national significance.
MAY 6, 2024 — Ahead of the approaching hurricane season, the Office of Response and Restoration’s (OR&R) Disaster Preparedness Program, in conjunction with the Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC) at the University of New Hampshire, held its 5th annual Hurricane Preparedness Summit.
MAY 6, 2024 — On April 30, several members from the NOAA Marine Debris Program within the Office of Response and Restoration joined OR&R’s Scientific Support and Regional Preparedness Coordinator William Whitmore to host a Marine Debris 101 workshop for partners and stakeholders in the New England region. Roughly three dozen participants attended the 90-minute virtual workshop.
The NOAA Marine Debris Program's Chief Scientist, Amy V. Uhrin gave the keynote address at Sea Grant’s Microplastics in the Coastal Region workshop held April 8-10, 2024, in Charleston, South Carolina.
August 2023
AUGUST 28, 2023 — On August 24, 2023, a $5.38 million settlement was finalized to restore natural resources impacted by contaminants discharged along the Gloucester, Massachusetts waterfront. The pollution came from a manufactured gas plant that operated along the Gloucester waterfront between 1854 and 1952. Manufactured gas plants often yielded by-products of the gas production process such as tars, sludges, and oils.
AUGUST 21, 2023 — Each year, for the past 12 years, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation hosts the Great Hudson River Estuary Fish Count. This year the event took place at nine sites, including Lemon Creek Park on Staten Island.
AUGUST 21, 2023 — OR&R recently published a new report, Oil Spills and Pelagic Sargassum, to assist those who work in oil spill response and planning where pelagic (open ocean) Sargassum is at risk from, or may interact with, oil spills.
August 14, 2023 – On July 24, 2023, NOAA Marine Debris Program Education Specialist Alexandria Gillen and Monitoring Coordinator Hillary Burgess led an impactful workshop for marine educators focused on the Marine Debris Monitoring and Assessment Project (MDMAP) at the National Marine Educators Association national conference.
August 14, 2023 – On August 2, the NOAA Marine Debris Program coordinated a workshop to discuss updates to the Hawai‘i Marine Debris Action Plan (Action Plan).
August 14, 2023 – In late July, OR&R partnered with the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and the Coastal Response Research Center to provide on-land and on-water training to USCG’s Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) pilots to strengthen oil spill response.
August 14, 2023 – On August 2, 2023, the team from the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Debris Project, a Hawaiʻi-based nonprofit organization, returned to Honolulu, with 86,100 pounds of marine debris removed from shallow coral reefs and shorelines of the islands and atolls within Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Of the debris removed, 69,330 pounds were derelict fishing nets and 16,770 pounds were plastics and other debris.
August 14, 2023 – OR&R’s Disaster Preparedness Program (DPP) is partnering with NOAA Sea Grant for the second time to help coastal communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters, such as hurricanes, flooding, tsunami, earthquake, and climate hazards. On August 8, 2023, DPP announced the four new projects, which total to $634,936 in FY23 federal funds, will take place in New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, and South Carolina.
AUGUST 7, 2023 — On July 25, 2023, the NOAA Marine Debris Program attended and presented at a Making Sense of Microfibers & Microplastics Policy session at the American Apparel & Footwear Association’s (AAFA) Environmental Committee Meeting, held in Boston, MA.
July 2023
JULY 31, 2023 — The National Ocean Service (NOS) Incident Management Team (IMT) conducted its first activation in the 2023 hurricane season for Tropical Storm Calvin, which impacted the Pacific.
JULY 24, 2023 — During the week of July 10, spill specialists from OR&R’s Emergency Response Division conducted a Science of Oil Spills (SOS) class for the Pacific Northwest region in Portland, Oregon. The class was jointly hosted by OR&R and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).
JULY 24, 2023 — The Anacostia River, which runs through Maryland and the District of Columbia, has suffered from many decades of pollution, from multiple sources including hazardous waste sites, runoff, and combined sewers. Communities along the Anacostia have been disproportionately impacted by this pollution.
JULY 24, 2023 — On July 18, Nancy Wallace, Director of the NOAA Marine Debris Program, participated in a virtual workshop organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network as part of its Ocean Media Initiative.
JULY 24, 2023 — From July 10-14, students from Rainier Prep and Showalter Middle Schools spent the week as NOAA Science Campers at the Western Regional Center in Seattle, Washington. NOAA Science Camp is a program of Washington Sea Grant and offers hands-on science learning opportunities, as well as exposure to NOAA’s mission areas and science careers.
JULY 24, 2023 — On July 13th, the Marine Debris Leadership Academy (MDLA) was launched at the Tijuana National Estuarine Research Reserve in San Diego, California. The MDLA was founded as an opportunity to empower leaders to continue to cultivate change in communities, systems, and themselves.
JULY 24, 2023 — On July 11-13, 2023, staff from OR&R’s Emergency Response Division provided a three-day, virtual training in Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Technique (SCAT) for the country of Guyana.
JULY 17, 2023 — On July 12, 2023, a $5.38 million settlement was proposed in Federal District Court to restore natural resources impacted by contaminants discharged along the Gloucester, Massachusetts waterfront.
JULY 17, 2023 — On Thursday of this week, July 20th, the You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know lecture series begins its second annual OR&R 101 series!
JULY 17, 2023 — NOAA scientists, aided in recent years by citizen scientists, have been photographing a boulder in Prince William Sound for 33 years. Why? The rock was coated in oil in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez supertanker ran aground on Bligh Reef, dumping more than ten million gallons of crude oil into the Sound. Today, the boulder is known as Mearns Rock, nicknamed after Dr. Alan Mearns, a scientist emeritus in NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration.
JULY 10, 2023 — The NOAA Marine Debris Program is developing a national shoreline marine debris monitoring plan in partnership with Western EcoSystems Technology Inc. Several national-international scale initiatives call for tools to document and report on the status and trends of marine debris. These include Regional Marine Debris Action Plans, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and momentum toward a global agreement on marine litter.
JULY 10, 2023 — From June 26-30, the Gulf of Mexico Alliance’s Marine Debris Cross-Team Initiative, co-led by the NOAA Marine Debris Program’s Gulf of Mexico Regional Coordinator Caitlin Wessel and US Fish and Wildlife’s Adriana Levia, held its annual half day meeting during the larger Gulf of Mexico Alliance All Hands.
June 2023
JUNE 26, 2023 — On June 13, the NOAA Marine Debris Program (MDP) coordinated and presented at the bi-annual California Ocean Litter Prevention Strategy webinar. The webinar brought together over 60 partners across the state and included a diverse set of sectors including state agencies, nonprofits, policy-makers, and academia.
JUNE 26, 2023 — On June 8, the NOAA Marine Debris Program unveiled a new sculpture made entirely of plastic marine debris items during a World Ocean Day event at the Cape Cod National Seashore.
JUNE 20, 2023 — NOAA’s Marine Debris Program is pleased to release the “Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Marine Debris Emergency Response Guide” (Guide). This Guide is the first published for the Pacific Region and aims to improve preparedness for responding to marine debris after typhoons and other disasters in the Commonwealth.
JUNE 20, 2023 — On May 19, 2023, the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Delaware Bay hosted a demonstration of using trained canines to detect subsurface shoreline oiling at Slaughter Beach in Milford, Delaware.
JUNE 20, 2023 — The NOAA Office of Response and Restoration participated in a three-day Response Roadshow hosted by the U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Strike Team in Fort Dix, New Jersey on June 6-8, 2023. The purpose of the meeting was to build relationships as a response community to better understand how federal, state, and local governments, as well as private industry work together to prevent, mitigate, and respond to human-made and natural disasters.
JUNE 20, 2023 — On June 8, the NOAA Marine Debris Program joined artists and scientists from around the Washington, DC, area at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History World Ocean Day celebration.
JUNE 12, 2023 — On May 16-17, William Whitmore, OR&R’s Northeast Scientific Support and Regional Preparedness Coordinator, participated in a two-day oil spill planning workshop with MIT Sea Grant and the Mashpee-Wampanoag Tribe. The workshop, which was funded through OR&R’s Disaster Preparedness Program and the National Sea Grant Office, was the first step in a collaborative effort to help the Mashpee-Wampanoag tribe create an oil spill response plan for its aquaculture sites along the south coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
JUNE 12, 2023 — On June 6, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana entered the consent decree finalizing settlement between NOAA and LLOG Exploration Offshore, LLC. The settlement, valued at $3.1 million, resolves LLOG Exploration Offshore, LLC of their liability for natural resource injuries resulting from a pipeline spill that discharged oil into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 70 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana.
JUNE 12, 2023 — From May 29 - June 2, representatives from around the world met in Paris, France, for the Second Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-2) to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.